Boston Rethinking Small-School Experiment (MA)
November 9, 2010
Boston schools underwent a radical experiment in the past decade: Four large neighborhood high schools were shuttered and replaced with more than a dozen smaller ones.
The thinking was that smaller schools could deliver a better education. A few years into the effort, funded with millions of dollars from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Mayor Thomas M. Menino proudly declared it to be “a model for the rest of the country.’’
But now the approach, championed by former superintendent Thomas W. Payzant, appears to have fallen out of favor with the city’s current school chief, Carol R. Johnson. She sees the small schools as a costly venture in an era of declining city revenue, and believes many have yielded lackluster results.
Last month, Johnson proposed shutting down the three high schools at the Hyde Park complex, citing low performance. The recommendation has rekindled a debate over what school size best fosters learning in an urban environment.
The Hyde Park closings follow her 2008 decision to place a small high school at the former South Bost on High on academic probation and merge two small high schools in Dorchester.
Backers of small schools say Johnson is giving up too soon and is basing decisions on incomplete data. The Boston experience contrasts sharply with New York City, where school leaders this fall trumpeted a new report declaring the success of their small-school conversions.
Theories abound as to why Boston’s school system has not achieved similar results as New York’s, from poor initial execution to subsequent years of budget cutting.
Meanwhile, defenders of Boston’s small high schools dispute Johnson’s characterization of academic failure and high operating expenses. Johnson, in presenting her Hyde Park closure plan, has not released any data that compare the performance and spending levels of each city high school.
“I don’t think it’s even debatable at this point that urban school systems need small-high school options,’’ said Neil Sullivan, executive director of the Boston Private Industry Council, a public-private partnership between the business community and education establishments that focuses on workforce development. “If we put a returning dropout student in a large high school, they are gone. If we put them in a small school that addresses their circumstances, they stay.’’
Irvin Scott, the School Department’s chief academic officer who oversees high schools, said the small-school conversions have had varying degrees of success and Johnson is committed to small high schools. He defended Johnson’s recommendation to shutter Hyde Park, arguing that the complex does not have at least one academic-standout school like the other three high school complexes.
“The small schools have had a huge impact on climate — more personalization, fewer fig hts among students — but some have not necessarily realized the academic achievement gains that people hoped for,’’ Scott said.
Throughout the past decade, urban districts across the country replaced large failing schools with smaller theme-based academies, hoping to strengthen relationships between students and teachers.
In Boston, each of the 12 small schools carved out of the former South Boston, Dorchester, Hyde Park, and West Roxbury high schools serves about 300 or 400 students. Each is built around a different theme, such as public service, the sciences, or communications.
The city still operates several large comprehensive high schools, such as Brighton and East Boston, where enrollment exceeds 1,000 students. It also operates several other small high schools at stand-alone sites.
The last major study on the city’s conversion of large high schools into smaller ones was completed in June 2008 by Mathematica Policy Research Inc. in New Jersey, which was commissioned by the Boston Plan for Excellence, an education nonprofit. The report found lackluster MCAS scores at the small schools, but improvements in attendance, fewer suspensions, and better academic performance.
Some small-high school supporters question the study’s conclusion because the authors had only two years worth of MCAS data available for the seven small high schools at the Hyde Park and West Roxbury campuses, which opened in fall 2005.
“What is really kind of heartbreaking to me is the district has to close schools and is doing it without an updated data analysis,’’ said Lila Allen, program director at Jobs for the Future, a Boston organization that works on education issues and oversaw about $25 million in grants from the Gates Foundation, much of wh ich went toward Boston’s small-school effort.
A Globe review of graduation rates and MCAS pass rates on the 10th-grade English and math exams found mixed results among the big and small high schools. A review of per-student spending found that small high schools were not the most costly to run.
The recent New York study, which examined more than 100 small high schools and 20,000 students, is gaining attention among supporters of small schools here. The study, conducted by the independent research group MDRC and believed to be the largest ever, found that New York’s small high schools had notably higher graduation rates than its other high schools.
Gordon Berlin, president of MDRC, said that because his organization’s study focused only on New York he could not draw conclusions about Boston’s experience. But he said there was a lack of data nationwide to assess the overall impact of replacing large high schools with smaller entities.
The Gates Foundation has stopped funding small-school efforts like those in Boston, finding it more effective to target spending on such projects as teacher training and national academic standards.
“Have small schools wildly changed the equation? We would say it’s somewhat mixed, and our funding strategy reflects that,’’ said Christopher Williams, a Gates Foundation spokesman, who nevertheless noted the foundation was pleased with New York’s results.
During the previous decade, Payzant, determined to fix Boston’s ailing high schools, pushed aggressively in opening the smaller schools, according to some people involved in the conversions. He opened each school largely by dividing up the current staff and students in the buildings. He also started the schools with all grade levels instead of ph asing in the grades, in what became known as the “big bang theory.’’
By contrast, New York hired new teachers, enrolled new students, and gradually added grades over the course of a few years. That enabled New York to create a new academic culture from day one, the opposite of Boston’s strategy.
“It was like building a boat while you are sailing it, but we figured it out, said Linda Lipkin, founding director of curriculum, assessment, and placement at Social Justice Academy, one of three schools that replaced the old Hyde Park High.
The other two are the Community Academy of Science and Health and The Engineering School.
Johnson’s recommendation on Oct. 6 to shutter the Hyde Park building stunned the three schools, which were expecting to consolidate back into a single school.
Amid protests by students, staff, and parents, Johnson decided to keep the Community Academy of Science and Health open. She plans to relocate the school, however.
On one recent afternoon, students and staff members from the two schools still slated for closure gathered around several tables in the library, where garbage bags covered bookcases because the school has no librarian. They defended their test scores and spoke of years of budget cutting.
At The Engineering School, where a third of the approximately 330 students have severe special needs, teachers said splitting those students apart next year could be traumatic for them.
“It’s very hard for our students,’’ said Trudy Brennan, a special education teacher. “They are asking questions every day.’’
Although the clocks and public address system don’t work a nd many computers are broken, the building itself appeared to be in good condition. Sun poured through tall windows in the hallways, which were well kept.
“They are pushing us to the wayside,’’ said Nathanael Kelly, 17, an Engineering School senior. “Our school has made significant strides. The potential in our school is not being fully realized.’’